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I've been an Intel fan-boy for years, but with what AMD is doing with the Ryzen stuff, now's a good time to swap-over. Had it not been for some Ryzen issues with the Vive VR setup, I'd probably have AMD'd earlier. With today's CPU selection, you really can't go wrong with either, but AMD is quickly feeling like the more cost-efficient option. As for GPU, of course it should be a NVidia. I personally use the gtx1060, and it's been plenty for my needs.
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You'll be doing plenty good with any i7 that's being sold in stores today as brand new. An i9 will get you future-proofed for a while longer still.
I can't even remember how old my i7-4820K is, since it's been a few years--it's only 4 cores (+ hyperthreading), but it's plenty fast for my use - with 64GB of RAM, right now I have 8 VMs running simultaneously 24/7 (sometimes more), with memory allocated to each varying anywhere between 1.5 and 8GB. Get big, fat SSDs to host your VMs. I started off with a pair of 512GB, and have since added a single 2TB (not including the boot drive).
Before that, I was using an i7-2600K, and the main reason I moved away from it is that I wanted to repurpose it as my gaming box (still in use today) and 32GB wasn't enough for the number of VMs I wanted to run side-by-side. That was otherwise also plenty fast. And of course now that my main VM host has 64GB, I'd really rather have it run with 128...but those boards were few and far in-between back when I purchased it.
But I wouldn't settle for anything less than an i7 to host VMs. I have an i5-based NUC with 32GB of RAM, and when it's running more than 4 VMs at once, they all start to feel sluggish. This is where an i7 (or better) really makes a difference, IMO.
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I am a total AMD fan so, naturally, I would advocate their CPUs. I have a bit of a bias against their video cards though because of previous bad experiences with them.
Anyway, I went to newegg and configured a system and saved it as a wish list. It has a 2060 video card just in case you might want to experiment with ray tracing. If that holds no interest to you then you can save a bit of money with a less expensive card. As it is, it comes in at $1820. Here's a link : wishlist system[^]. If nothing else, it's something to consider. Have Fun.
-edit- That has a 2TB M.2 drive, 32GB RAM, and a 750W PSU. Those can likely be scaled back if you prefer and/or want to save some money for a really nice monitor(s).
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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I use a 55" TV as a monitor already. The rest of the specs actually seem like what I'm after although i'll see if the drive is NVMe? i think M.2 implies it is? i'll look.
Keep in mind i'm not buying right away so any of these systems are going to be cheaper by the time i buy. I figure in my budget i can get just below bleeding edge for the stuff i *want* and the rest to be acceptable.
I need room for lots of ram and i need lots of cores. I'll start with 32GB of RAM. Video card is meh as I am at best a casual gamer and I have a console but it would be nice if i could play with gaming on it, just for kicks. For that kind of money it should, so long as i had a mid range video card it would do me fine - i've had good luck getting gaming cards on the cheap on ebay from people who have to have the latest all the time and sell off their newish cards as soon as the next nvidia is out
Eventually, - not for this system - but for my fancy system, it won't be a speed demon, but it will have zero moving parts. Copper cauliflower heatsink and convection power supply, probably in a bespoke case i get milled. yeah, wood. or maybe a custom glass metal job.
Real programmers use butterflies
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If you are into custom cases, check www.guru3d.com and their monthly contest. I have seen a few wooden ones and all kinds of wild stuff. Linkage : The Guru3D Rig of the Month[^]
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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That's cool.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Rick - just curious about the system you spec'd. I was looking at the new Ryzen chips (thinking about a build) and was astonished at the amount of power they draw. Now I really don't care about global warming, but I do care about noise. The last system I built was around a Sonata Quiet Case III. You could not hear the fans....
With the liquid cooling and a higher end Ryzen, how noisy do these units get?
cg
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Actually the power draw on the latest generation Ryzens is very, very good. With liquid cooling it will be silent. My machine at work has liquid cooling and it is quite silent. It is a Corsair unit and it seems to work very well.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Okay, that's good, I'll have to look into liquid cooling. I think when I started looking at the AMD processors, I ran across the ThreadRipper series - what a beast - but 180W. I understand now that a high end Ryzen is < 100W.
Thanks
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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I got a Lenovo P1 (that's a laptop, not desktop) about a year ago. It's got an i7-8750H and that's handled anything I've thrown at it. 6 cores, turbo boost up to 4.1GHz, it's fine.
Having said that, my work desktop workstation was acquired in 2013. It's got a Xeon E5-1650, 6 cores, 3.2GHz. It's slower than my P1 (I can tell from compilation jobs, although that could equally be because it has SATA SSDs, not NVMe), but can run multiple VMs fine.
And then there's our dev server at work - we got that around 2015, IIRC. It's got a Xeon E5-2440 v2, 8 cores, 1.9GHz. And that runs 6 VMs, 24/7 (we've separated out our Git, Redmine etc applications, but did it before Docker became a thing, so they went in separate VMs. One of my 'to-do' items is dockerising them, but it's never a high enough priority!). 5 are Windows Server, 1 is Linux. RAM is more of a resource than CPU, I've found.
I guess what I'm saying is - I reckon any modern i7 will be plenty good enough for running multiple VMs, given that ancient Xeons can manage it without a problem. Make sure you get at least 32GB of RAM, you'll be fine.
Java, Basic, who cares - it's all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy cr*p
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That was kind of my thoughts too. Practically speaking I figured I could do with an i7. I still kinda want the i9 though, for reasons 
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: I still kinda want the i9 though, for reasons
Yes, I know those sorts of reasons - the ones that would never fly in a properly costed business case, but are very important nonetheless  My Lenovo laptop may have had some of those reasons behind its purchase as well...
Java, Basic, who cares - it's all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy cr*p
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It is not as critical as you might think.
I am still using a 3770k with 32G. It has 4 cores (8 threads) and I can (and have) run a half dozen different VMs at the same time, and never use more than 25% of the CPU. While I certainly won't recommend a CPU that old, pretty much any more modern CPU should do the trick.
I would recommend water cooling -- not necessarily a custom setup, but a "complete" system. They are nearly the same cost as a fan. Just put one in my daughter's new computer. Otherwise when your CPU does pull out all of the stops, the fans can get pretty noisy.
I do not game either -- however, I use a 1080 graphics card. Not for framerate, but to get good high resolution and for use in parallel applications.
And a SSD for drive C is essential.
The system is old, but other than a couple of GPU upgrades, it has been more than adequate development.
Now, if you need very large data storage, your cost can rise substantially by the time you implement a good RAID (preferably RAID 6).
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I love the feature in text editors when you highlight a word (or even have the caret blinking in the word) and all other instances of the same word highlight. I use this feature all the time.
Such a small and simple thing but it sure makes my life easier.
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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My favourite text editor feature is the one where it replaces every 10th letter with a different letter (or symbol).
At first I thought it was just my clumsy fingers, but it's just far too consistent to be that, so must be the tools, amirite?
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Random letters replacing the ones on the page with the ones that are in my head
In my case it's called Arthritis!
It's been 6 months since I joined the gym and there's been no progress. I'm going there tomorrow in person to find out what's really going on!
JaxCoder.com
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If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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After years (decades, when I think of it) of using client versions of Windows for development machines, and putting up with forced reboots after updates at random times - despite Microsoft's best efforts towards providing more "flexible" reboot options now given to users - I finally gave up a few months ago and built a Server-based VM for all my development work. Server 2019, more specifically. Primary reason: based on my experience, rebooting a server operating system has remained a sacro-sanct thing, in that a Windows Server would never, ever reboot on its own and you had to have an admin explicitly initiate a reboot process or at the very least, click on a Reboot Now button. I've had instances where a reboot prompt had been patiently waiting on the screen for weeks. Server would never take it upon itself to go ahead and do it on its own.
Long story short: I RDPed into that dev VM this morning, and was greeted initially by an empty desktop, and then saw a couple of Explorer windows being restored to a bunch of folders I last used. But all my running apps (including 2 instances of VS 2019) were gone. Exactly as might happen on a Windows 10 machine that just got rebooted. The following confirmed my suspicion:
(Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem).LastBootUpTime
20200115191127.667503-300
So, it rebooted at 19:11:27 last evening. I know exactly what I was doing at that time. I had left my dev VM running, after telling it to go ahead and install Tuesday's updates, and left it alone once the download process was initiated. I then went to dinner, came back, and at that exact time, I know I was playing GTA5 on my game machine (a separate box).
This is now the second month in a row (just after Patch Tuesday) that this happens to my dev box. WTE, MS? I can't imagine this should happen on a server OS, in a data center, running important tasks. Why is this happening in my VM? (and no, the host OS was not rebooted)...
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I can confirm what you are saying.
We actually had production systems running as VMs and they were set to not reboot but did actually reboot. Our IT dept investigated and had captured details and reported to Microsoft (via our service account) and at the time (a couple of months ago) MS said it was a bug.
I don't have the details but I believe there was a fix.
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raddevus wrote: they were set to not reboot
There's an option to allow the updater to automatically reboot a server?
Who in their right mind would even make such an option available?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark_Wallace wrote: There's an option to allow the updater to automatically reboot a server?
I may have mis-stated that.  I'm not sure there was an option to "not reboot".
I just remember that they all restarted and IT had said the way they had configured them was to insure that they did not reboot.
But, I agree with you about it being crazy. We were all astonished that the VMs had restarted and it was all related to the new update practices.
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raddevus wrote: MS said it was a bug.
[rolls eyes]
"A bug".
That was something I've been able to reliably count on since Windows 2000. They just can't help themselves but to go and fiddle with things.
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When I remoted into my Azure server this morning, I saw a notification that 'Updates were installed' and thought the same thing. Luckily I didn't have any work in progress and luckily customers aren't hitting that server when it restarted apparently at around 0400 this morning.
For Win10, I do appreciate the new little icon in the system tray that gives me some warning.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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I run Windows, including an older server, the same way: via VM's . To manage all Internet activity, I purchased a router/firewall that has application control capability along with normal rules blocking/allowing.
Down at the office, we have 2 such. One of the categories is Windows Updates. I can control (either block, log or both) by all machines, some machines (or none). I can also set a schedule.
For the office, we have a wireless AP for customers and suppliers. It is on a separate public IP address with its own firewall. I block all social media (farcebook and such), webmail and other stuff. Block by IP in the firewall to block streaming. Costs money, but well spent AFAIAC.
Some time back, I set rules to block outbound to every IP group that Windows used to phone home. I think it required about 8 rules. Cut back on activity. Our routers have very flexible logging capability and built in Wireshark. Won't quote any brand names because every time I recommend anything, the recommendee winds up getting screwed. 
If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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Cool story bro.
How is this preventing updates (I do install them) from automatically rebooting a server OS, when it's supposed to wait for me to tell it to go ahead?
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